Star Wars

The new LEGO Star Wars offers a more open-ended universe for characters across all eras. The show’s first episode ties together several shorts previously released online with the premise of R0-GR (Matthew Wood) sharing adventures from his new autobiography to various characters. The stories range from his inglorious days as part of the Droid Army and adventures on various worlds over the years including Endor, Naboo, Jakku, Takodana, and Tatooine. Various characters show up both in the flashbacks and as R0-GR’s captive audience in the present including Han Solo, Chewbacca, R2-D2, Cassian, the Freemakers, Maz, Rose, and Admiral Ackbar. While lightweight, and mostly forgettable, the first episode of LEGO Star Wars: All-Stars still proves to be more fun that the mostly disappointing Star Wars Resistance.

Set prior to the events in The Force Awakens, the newest Star Wars animated series centers around young pilot Kazuda Xiono (Christopher Sean) who is recruited by Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and sent to the planet Castilon in the Outer Rim to learn all he can about the First Order. Due to some misunderstandings, any hopes of Kaz keeping a low profile are destroyed early on as a innocuous comment comes back to bite him in the ass and forces the pilot to take part in a dangerous race against an undefeated competitor (Myrna Velasco). While I’m not quite sold on the concept yet, and has a definite prequel vibe with the race aspect of the story, it’s still a new Star Wars cartoon and there is enough here for awhile at least.

Guilt can be a powerful motivator. Betrayed by Queen Trios of Shu-Torun and led into an Imperial trap, the scrappy Rebels continue to fight to survive against the Imperial Fleet led by Darth Vader. Thanks to intelligence provided by Han Solo in the previous issue, and some nifty flying by Luke here, the Rebel Fleet is finally able to deploy their fighters and make a counterattack against the Empire.

However, to save what’s left of the fleet, and get their capital ships up and running, Leia will need the codes to break Trois betrayal – codes which are currently on Vader’s Star Destroyer. And so her worshipfulness hatches a plan.